Jolla Tablet Hardware Update

Many of you have been asking for more details on the tablet schedule. We have heard you and we will try to keep you all more informed on how things progress from here as we get closer and closer to the mass production and shipment-start. First, I must emphasize that many parts of the product creation process are done under NDA (non-disclosure agreement), therefore not all the details and specifications can be shared, but I will try to explain as much as I can about the process so far. In addition, building a product involves thousands of components with dependencies. Changing one major component will always have an impact on other components, which mandate also changes to the PCB (printed circuit board). As with new components, there is a certain leadtime involved — from getting the first samples, testing the solution, ordering a larger batch for the proto-build and then finally placing the order for mass production. Depending on the component, leadtime can take up to several weeks as components are not always available on the shelves when selected.

Let’s start from the beginning: the original chain of events started with the display shown at SLUSH 2014 last November. We did not feel that the display was good enough for the product and for you, our contributors.

Not one new display, but two

Hence we began our search for alternative displays, and found one that showed great promise from the sample panel. In terms of specs, it translated to an increase in the contrast ratio from 700 to 1000, as well as luminance from 320 to 420. It should be noted that these are values on paper for the panel before it is laminated with touch foil and glass. As it looked good, we decided to make the change for our next build with that display panel. The build was ready just in time for MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2015, where we showed the Jolla Tablet to the whole world. Despite numerous improvements, this new (second) display had a low yield rate, which manifested as yellow spots on the display, and was again something we could not approve for the product. This issue was investigated closely in the build/lamination process as well as on the panel level, but we were not able to fix it with the panel in question. So, it was time to look for another panel that would have feature parity with this second panel, as going back to the first one was not really an option anymore after seeing the beautiful colors on the second display.

The third display which has similar specifications to the second display was found after a period of searching, however this display has a different display interface – MIPI (Mobile Industry Processor Interface) instead of the eDP (embedded Display Port). The difference meant that we had to make changes to the PCB. Intel Baytrail SoC (System on Chip) supports MIPI interface, but that MIPI interface is not capable of providing high enough resolution for our display, thus we had to come up with an alternative solution to this. The identified solution was to add an additional bridge IC (integrated circuit) to the PCB that converts eDP output to MIPI output for the display without losing quality or performance. Furthermore with this PCB change and new display, some mechanical parts required modifications because of the different components.

From this point forward

The build in week 31, from which the Developer loan devices will be sent, is the pre-production batch we referred to in our previous blog post. This will be the first substantial build of devices with the latest configuration, and we are doing final checks on this larger build to ensure that everything is ok before we can start the mass production of Jolla Tablets.

In the meantime, we also did a couple of additional hardware changes. The first one is an issue arising from our internal testing, where the micro-AB type USB connector did not provide proper mechanical protection for users inserting the wrong side of USB cable to the port, so we changed it to the micro-B type connector. Unfortunately we could not go with USB micro-C type connector, due to limited availability. Finally as a bonus to all of you, we added a Hall-sensor which allows accessory covers to turn off the display when the cover is closed.

This is the story so far, and currently some of us are heading to the factory to verify the upcoming pre-production build and devices, with the following schedule:

July 28th the SMT (Surface-mount technology) will be done for the PCB, which means mounting the electrical components to the PCB

July 29th testing of the PCB will be executed to verify everything is in order

July 30th devices will be assembled

July 31st the assembled devices are packaged

When this is complete, we’ll carry out test shipments of Jolla Tablets to our Developer Program members to verify our logistics chain and for the developers to do some testing/development. We will also be performing our own internal tests for the aforementioned final checks.

We’ll keep you posted if we come up with changes in the above plan & schedule.

Best Regards,

Sage

Marko Saukko

Chief Engineer at Jolla since Feb 2012. Maintainer of the Nemo Mobile project, also involved with the Mer Project, with years of experience on hardware adaptation work. Photography and video game enthusiast.

128 Comments

ninepine
on July 27, 2015 at 5:25 pm

While an update is welcome this is incredibly technical and difficult to follow. Terms such as “the build in week 31″ lack context so rather than clarify unfortunately this post makes things even more opaque. I also fail to see how an NDA applies to Jolla disclosing details of its own product to its customers. It might apply to the supplier / manufacturer but not the other way. A further post written for non technical people would be much appreciated please.

I don’t think it’s easily possible to provide a non-technical version of this blog post – this would defeat the sense of the whole thing – lots of people were complaining there was no communication about what exactly the problems were. The problems are technical, so there’s only so much you can say about them without getting into technical language…

Short version: There were problems with the colours in the display (yellow spots) that did not satisfy expectations. It was tried to change something about the production / assembly process, but it turned out to be a problem of the display itself.
The new display shows better colours, but it has a different type of connection (think of something like HDMI plug instead of DVI or VGA on a computer monitor) which was not available (in good quality) on the mainboard that has been chosen for the tablet. So they had to come up with an adaptor to properly connect the new display to the “old” mainboard. This made some additional hardware changes necessary.

Additionally, the USB connector was changed to a more robust one (people who owned a N900 know about problems with that – a lot of connectors just BROKE after some time…).

What kind of context do you need for “the build in week 31″? They are talking about the tablets that are produced in calendar week 31, i.e. this week, starting 27.07.2015 and ending 2.8.2015.
This is quite common talk in business environment where one week is just the right time frame for most schedules, although I must admit it is not common to think in calendar weeks in private life.

Regarding NDA: it is quite common to sign mutual NDA’s in both directions – both parties in a purchasing / development / … process might have information that must not be made public by the other party.
I usually refuse to sign any one-way-NDA as a supplier when talking to customers.

Jolla tablet is not 100% designed at Jolla. It is ODM’s (original design manufacturer) design where Jolla only makes some modifications and chooses some parts, like the display. Jolla and the ODM have NDA, where Jolla can’t reveal details of the design.

Hi ninepine, thanks for your feedback! Week 31′s build refers to this week’s build, with the schedule listed towards the end of the blog post.

We strive to make the occasional technical posts somewhat understandable for the general readers (for example, expanding on the acronyms; or perhaps we can include a glossary next time for further explanation), while keeping enough details to satisfy many of those who have requested it. The majority of our blog posts should be palatable for our general (non-technical) readers.

This USB connector change will not affect to the USB-OTG functionality. You will not be able to use USB type A connectors, but also you will not be able to break your USB port so easily anymore. Also most of the manufacturers have stopped using the AB type and most USB-OTG accessories are type B as well.

The guys of OnePlus say:
“Future-proofed – the OnePlus 2’s charging and data port utilizes the new USB Type-C standard. With a [...] cable [that] can be plugged in at either orientation. At both ends.”

Yeah, type C is really good, would be the obvious port to any high-tech vendor by the end of 2015. If jolla order them 2014 I can’t see how provider can’t come up with 10000. But if they wait last minute Samsung & co would probably order it all for 2-3 years. Well it doesn’t matter really, type B or type C.

Well, Jolla as the smaller contract partner has to comply to NDA of the manufacturer to take all the blame and not let the bigger partner apear incompetent in case something fails. It is one more detail making Jollas achievement great in the whole, given the circumstances of petrified structures in global hardware market.

Thanks a lot for this interesting update.
A lot of people have been waiting for exactly this kind of post.
I just hope more people think like me and the criticism towards lack of openness is reduced to minimum (I don’t expect it to disappear completely, you can never do it completely right for some people…).
With this kind of explanation I’m happy to wait (OK not happy, but you know what I mean ) a few weeks more to get a good product.

Remember that those values are the panel itself and might be a bit different when the panel is laminated with glass, touch etc. Also on the paper the third display actually has luminance of 460 while contrast stays the same 1000.

I think that some eager community member will do some measurements when the devices are out ;). Anyway, lets see if we could provide more detailed information on the display specs later.

… the contrast ratio of the just presented OnePlus #2 seems to be impressive @ 1:1500 – but a well balanced color rendition is another, IMHO yet more important thing:
once you’ve started taking pictures in AdobeRGB – your hobby is photography as well – you usually don’t want to return to sRGB. It’s just lacking quite a bunch of vividness due to the absence of all those subtle yet important tonalities …

Hi bzar, here’s sage’s reply to Copernicus: “This USB connector change will not affect to the USB-OTG functionality. You will not be able to use USB type A connectors, but also you will not be able to break your USB port so easily anymore. Also most of the manufacturers have stopped using the AB type and most USB-OTG accessories are type B as well.”

Wow, what a journey ! And thanks for the insight …. Hopefully the additional IC will remain insignificant in power consumption.
What do the colorspace-caps of the new display look like ? Towards AdobeRGB ?

Jolla! Thank you for coming through! This is the post I had been waiting for. I had been critical of the delays, but now that I understand more clearly it makes a bitter pill much easier to swallow. Keep up the good work! My excitement for the tablet has been restored.

Thanks for the update! It’s interesting to hear what goes into the hardware side of things, and how much work goes into navigating through vendors and components over which you have little to no control.

Great post! I appreciate the people who have hands on the product share some real information within the community, despite the fact they all must be very busy right now. Good luck with assembling and testing!

If you’re only using your tablet at home, I doubt there would ever be a reason to turn it off. However, if you’re using it in a public place, you might not want someone to be able to start using it just by opening the cover… I suppose you could set up the tablet to always require a password when you open the cover, but that seems a bit awkward.

Argh, dunno how to edit comments. Anyway, yeah, I’m being a bit dense here; if your tablet has been physically switched off, the cover should not be able to switch it back on by itself, so my reasoning is flawed here…

Hi Krijali and Copernicus, if you do a search for “how to disable hall sensor”, you’ll find that sometimes people want it off for different reasons. I found DIY docks, magnetic phone mount in car, and working in a high magnetic field environment as some of the reasons people wanted to turn it off. There may be other reasons, so we provide the flexibility

Thx for this very interesting update. I was critical about lack of information and am gratefull now for the given ones.
So i will patiently wait my early bird tablet and look forward for SFOS 2.0 on my phone.

This type of post should be resume in a paragraph and placed in @Carol Chen’s posts, that way it can be regular and transparent to all supporters. (But can still write a once in a will type of tech post!)

…. with the splitting up into two jolla companies ahead, I am wondering if both companies will remain committed to staying in close contact with a supportful community – aka the (social) “other half”.
If so, a technology side equivalent to Carol Chen – thanks for your awesome job so far ! – may has to be established to avoid communicative blackouts resulting in astonishment or resentfulness as just experienced …. any plans ?

It is a good thing that the Z3735F (I think that is the model that they are using) supports eDP/DDIS (Digital Display Interface Signals) in addition to MIPI. This will give enough bandwidth to run the display at the desired resolution.

I am assuming that the issue with MIPI is that they have the board wired for one of the SoC’s 2 channels with a maximum resolution of 1920×1080 @ 60 : 24b per channel (though I could be wrong about this). This is in contrast to the chip’s support for DP 1.1 and eDP 1.3 which has a maximum bandwidth of 17.28 Gbit/s. This gives the eDP a maximum resolution of 2560×1600 @ 60 : 24b.

100% agree. Yes, since it’s a crowdfunding project information is key. Product secondary. They way jolla handle it slightly embarrassing. Hope they learned from it and keeps the info coming in a steady flow..

Thank you very much for the write up. Hopefully Sailfish OS 2.0 becomes a great success so the Taiwanese & Chines ODM’s will be lining up to test their hardware for it soon
Any word on audio part? Will we want to jump of closest bridge when hearing teenager playing modern music full volume on it?

I’m really excited about the tablet now. Its funny how much difference a blog post can make – in my head I was drifting towards the (delayed) delivery date not really expecting very much, but now I am just as excited as I was when I made my initial contribution.

I totally understand the issues you’ve faced, and congratulations to the build team for overcoming them! Wow, only a few more weeks to go before the real work begins.. delivery.. its a never ending cycle for you guys. Chapeau!

So happy that finally the community will be able to see the fruits of all the hard work that has gone into this..

Thanks for the more transparent update, personally I found myself caught off guard with the last post about switching displays for no apparent reason. Now we have the reason why and more information about other hardware aspects. Too bad about the usb-c connector, I always hated the single direction usb connectors. Maybe you could pair up with znaps http://kck.st/1OdGZ4V ? Sail on !

When I backed the indygogo campaign for the tablet, I did so without any expectation of delivery at any particular time: it was a contribution, not a purchase. I did expect a device at some point, and I still do, recognizing that it may well have rough edges and glitches, the price of using a boutique product instead of a mass-merchandised and prifit driven device. Updates such as this one, and news of the process such as that of the involvement of SSH, allow me an insight into the process and a connection to my device-to-be that is different from that of the alienated disappointment I expect from technology purchases. This one, I will know something about. And with an SDK and Qt and a user community, this one, I will be able to tweak a little and understand a little.

Thank you for the update, I’m really excited already! I don’t mind the delays, as long as the final quality of the product is right.
Good to hear some technical explanations, I guess the Jolla customer base is (mostly) tech savvy enough to understand what you’re talking about

Thanks a lot for the detailed update. It brings light into darkness and promotes an understanding of the delay and the problems you have. In am sure that such an update had been enough in the past to spare us a lot of resentment. But better late than never!

Thanks Sage, I must say after such detailed information about what had been going on all my disappointment, frustration and anger has completely gone away. I will patiently wait for a well built and rigorously tested product.

This is better than “we had problems with the display, and it will be late”.

I guess that quite a big share of Jolla supporters are above the average in regards to electronics knowledge, and are mostly technology enthusiasts, therefore this is the kind of post they expect.
For sure is what I expect, since now I do feel much better to know why I have to wait longer.

Again thanks for the transparency, and please keep it like this. From what I read I think almost everybody is willing to forgive delays when they are properly justified.

Consider that we payed for the product in advance, and this is a luxury that not everybody can expect. Meaning that we had a great deal of trust in you.

In the last blog post, people were upset because Jolla was not being exact in the details. Now, Jolla is giving us much more info as they can divulge and have time for, and some are upset that it is too much information and too technical!

This shows that you can not please everybody, Jolla! Do what you do best and do it well, and those that are loyal will love you for it! Ignore the trolls and complainers!

As with everything in life, it’s a balance It’s true that we can’t please everyone, but we do listen to feedback and heed the useful ones, while keeping the focus on making quality SW/HW products. Supportive comments are welcome too, naturally, as they spur us on to do better!

The guys are on their way back to Finland this morning from the factory. They’ve been working all weekend and probably extremely tired, but we’ll work on an update and share it shortly. Thanks for your support mike7b4!

Carol, I have one question? I am about to receive my lastu case as I had ordered it later. They have Itella Posti as their shipping agent & they in India handover to India Post which is a Govt postal and frankly speaking very bad. Who is your shipping Partner? I hope you have DHL or Fedex or some good one. For now I’m just waiting eagerly for my tablet and the wait is just unbearable. Anyway, I want a good product so take your time but not too much.

I was initially enthused by the Jolla Tablet for probably the same basic reason as most of the other supporters. I saw it as an “enthusiast-led” product accessible to customers in a way that Android\Windows\iOS devices can’t be.

I had expected that as a consequence Jolla would keep up a steady flow of News, Information & updates, good & bad about the Tablet and its progress. Sadly this has not (until now) been the case.

Reading “between the lines” here & in Forums, I don’t think I was alone in finding the silence about progress & opacity of what little information was shared, quite alienating. I felt myself turning from enthusiastic Supporter into annoyed Customer….
Your detailed and informative Blog post about the new Display has turned that feeling around 180 degrees. I’m now really looking forward to getting my Tablet and participating with everyone else in the “adventure” that I’d originally signed-up for.
Thank you.

Thank you for the informative update. I only donated to the campaign to see something else come to fruition that would compete against Android and iOS. This is my first exposure to anything Jolla and Sailfish OS, so an update like this can be appreciated without worry that the project may be disbanded. It just gets me more excited. So if the information comes in dribs and drabs, with some background/technical details rather than long delays in communication you can maintain that excitement of the fan/user-base.

How wonderful it is you start your blog with “We have heard you…” And you actually did listen during this Tablet project. Great!

But could you also please listen on the battery problem we have with our phones? My original battery lasted for a year. I was one of the few who ordered a replacement. That one lasted a little over six months. So alas, warranty was over. Luckily my wife didn’t want the Jolla phone I bought her, so I can still use a Jolla. But could you please supply more spare batteries?